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Occupy Wall Street, Late Tuesday

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If arrests resume tomorrow, the NYPD First First District phone is 212-334-0611. Cf. this:

everybody at risk of being arrested had lined up a lawyer in advance. Parents of the kids were informed, and we had a network of old ladies who called the police station continuously to ask about those who had been arrested. And now you are sitting there, and everything is happening as predicted, and the good detective is offering you a cigarette and the bad one is hitting you on the head and it looks like a bad joke. And the phones are ringing in the police station and nobody can do anything. And my question is, who is under siege now? This is not the most comfortable situation for the police: they deal with criminals. You block them from doing their normal job, traffic, looters, the things they should do instead of interrogating an 18-year-old kid for wearing a T-shirt...

Comments

The "kids" managed to turn this from being a demonstration against Wall Street power to being all about the police.* It's easy to let this happen if you don't stay focused on your real goals.

My sense that this was what they wanted (or were looking farward to) was part of why I did not participate. "Day of Rage" is not good branding if you are intending non-violent protest. And a lot of untrained people doing CD - not good. If you want to get arrested, you make it a decision and (as far as I'm concerned) you do it in a dignified way.

I mean, I'm glad they decided to do something. I just had really serious doubts about the lack of specificity, the way they "organized" this, and other aspects. I was not surprised when the photos I saw showed almost entirely, or entirely, young white people there.

(Sorry to be such a party pooper. I was actually excited about what was going on, on Saturday and Sunday anyway, despite my ongoing misgivings. Andd as I said, I'm gratified whenever people decide to Do Something to make themselves heard, and try stuff out. But I'd like also to learn some lessons from this.)

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* And if anyone wants to make this be about "the police are a tool of the Fat Cats" so justifying this change of focus, well, I cannot sign on to that. For reasons I've mentioned many times, I don't think regarding the NYPD as our enemy is a productive strategy. It also doesn't win us friends.

But we're at day #5 now. Yes, the naming wasn't good, but I wouldn't reduce it to "kids looking to confront cops." It's been nonviolent and it's hardly been just young people. Amy Goodman had an extended interview on Monday's Democracy Now with a 71 year old woman who had gone back to work in order to support her struggling middle aged daughters. There are plenty of those stories out there.

As for the less-than-orderly aspects, think about how much of an improvement this is over the Seattle WTO protests a decade ago. I'd say this is much better organized, and as it settles into an occupation (not just a Day) there's a good chance it will get better and better.

Thanks to the student struggles that had punctuated the Milosevic years, they felt like veterans. "We already had seven years' experience of opposition under our belts, which was ridiculous, as we were only in our mid-twenties."

The people involved in this are learning; I don't think its sophistication can be gauged at such an early stage.

But for me one lesson of Tahrir Square is that "all walks of life" must participate. I don't see that from the images, though my mind could be changed with comprehensive data or a report. (I remember counting the beards to get an estimate of Muslim Brotherhood participation in Tharir Square, though I can't find the link.) And that's not a knock; I'm going to repeat "bold, persistent experimentation" until I'm blue in the face.

* * *

Given that the elite wants violence, is prepared for it, and enjoys it, it's not surprising that a "kids vs. cops" story would surface and others would not. That said, watching the tweets scroll by, there was a clear strand of that.

However, it's the relationships being forged on the ground that matter. We can't know these.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

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